


Week one

by Jackie Thomas (Jackie_Thomas)



Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:11:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackie_Thomas/pseuds/Jackie%20Thomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Santos is president, Josh and Sam are back in the White House.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Week one

“It’s not enough, Frank.” Josh was already yelling into his phone and he hadn’t even signed in yet. “You promised me twenty votes.”

“Morning, Mr Lyman,” the security guard murmured as Josh scrawled his name. He did not get a response.

“No, listen to me. You speak to the damn caucus.”

Josh stormed down the corridor, his mac flying behind as if it were, like his secret service detail, struggling to keep up.

“Do I sound like a care about their breakfast?” He flung open his office door. “Okay, nice try buddy. Talk to me in one hour with better news.” He dropped his backpack and –

“Hi?” Sam looked up from a pile of briefing papers.

“Ah, dammit.” Josh blinked, surprised for the tenth time at the transformed office.

“You’re kidding.” Sam took off his glasses. “Again? You know, they gave you your own office. The one next to the egg-shaped one.”

Josh slumped into a visitor’s chair, deflating. “If I don’t concentrate I come this way. I’ve got some kind of muscle-memory thing going on.”

He rested his arm on the desk and his gaze caught the ghost of his own reflection in the highly polished surface. “Is this mine?”

“No,” Sam said, patiently. “It’s my desk. Do you want to see my job description?”

“No, no. I just, I just don’t remember shiny.”

Sam went out into the corridor returning with a mug of coffee for Josh.

“Who were you just yelling at?” He asked, sitting in the other visitor’s chair.

“Frank Bell. He’s screwing us out of the caucus vote.”

Sam nodded. “I know. I’m on it.”

“You are? Of course you are.”

“You’re supposed to leave that stuff to me now.”

Josh squinted again at his fading self on the desk surface.

“Yeah. No, I know. I just thought –.”

“You thought you could put off appointing the Secretary of Labour for a while. You thought you could be too busy to speak to the Kuwaiti ambassador.”

Josh looked up. “Why would you say that?”

“Look, Josh,” Sam said. “If there’s something I’m not doing you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“There’s nothing – I mean you’re doing great.”

“Then you’ve got to stop doing my job.” Josh began to reply but Sam cut him off. “And start doing your own.”

With anyone else Josh would have mustered a defence, with Sam he just sighed. “Leo’s job.”

“Your job,” Sam insisted.

“I go into that office and I keep thinking I’m going find him there, knowing the right thing to do, in control of everything.”

“There isn’t anyone better than you to be this President’s Chief of Staff. If Leo were here, he’d say the same thing.” Sam laid a hand on Josh’s arm. “You can do this you know. You really can. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe you could.”

Josh nodded slowly. He looked at Sam’s hand, still lingering on his arm, a faint echo of an ancient intimacy.

He put aside his coffee. “I’d better go to my alleged office then. If you keep insisting I have one.” He hefted his bag on to his shoulder and started to leave. Sam caught up with him.

“Where are you going?” Josh asked.

“To make sure you get there.”

They walked together. “Thanks Sam.”

“No problem.”

“Hey, Sam. What’s this about you interfering with the speechwriting?”

“That’s not -. I was just tweaking.”

“Meddling, I heard. Is it true you rewrote the whole middle section?”

“Well maybe -.”

Josh slung his arm over Sam’s shoulder. “Meddling. You are the Meddler.”

Sam stopped. “You’re calling me that?”

“I’m trying it out.”

 

End

August 2006


End file.
